SOCIAL NETWORK AD SPENDING IS FORECAST TO INCREASE BY 20% TO OVER $43 BILLION IN 2020 34 – EMARKETER

Speaking to a family member last year, the extent of online tracking came up as a topic of conversation. Discussing holiday plans for the year ahead my relative relayed a story about how she and her husband had been discussing Grand Cayman as a potential holiday destination and how later that day she began to see adverts for hotels for Grand Cayman online and on her social media apps, despite not searching for it online. I’m sure many of us have had a feeling at times that our conversations are being listened to. Online and mobile advertising can be so spookily accurate nowadays that some of us have thought at times that surely there’s no other way ads can be that targeted unless our conversations are being listened to.

This question comes up very early on in Netflix’s very insightful documentary, ‘The Great Hack’. The expert being interviewed agrees that microphones on smartphones are not being tapped for advertising – which is also something that some companies that use this kind of predictive advertising have gone on record to say as well. Instead, the behavioural and predictive targeting engines that online advertisements are now based on are so advanced they can predict what our interests are to an unnerving degree.

Part of the reason that these predictive engines have been able to become so advanced is the sheer volume of information and data we put out about ourselves online. Before the advent of social media, the information that was online and available for advertisers was still relatively minimal. But, facilitated by social media channels, we have been voluntarily uploading more and more data for years which has allowed advertising platforms to develop such a detailed profile of us – everything from pictures, personal information, opinions on certain issues, travel plans, even the hashtags that we use on posts are data points that are run through sophisticated algorithms to enable hyper-targeted advertising.

But the online advertising market was already highly sophisticated well before social media came on the scene. Sites like Facebook have done a great job at harnessing the additional data they own to make online and mobile advertising as targeted as possible, and if you think only information that you voluntarily upload onto these sites is used, then you are wrong. As already alluded to earlier, the key point you should remember is that we are not the customers for free online services; rather, businesses who advertise are. We are the product and our data is the key to making money.

For a bit of history, Internet advertising back in the 1990s widely used a Cost Per Mille (CPM) model, with platforms and sites charging advertisers per thousand page impressions. Then Google came along and revolutionised the online advertising model, pioneering the Cost Per Click (CPC) or Pay Per Click (PPC) model, where advertisers could bid on certain search keywords and only pay for the clicks to their website that they received. This model still accounts for a vast proportion of Google’s overall revenue today, but it is a tool that has been around even longer that is the key to the online tracking and targeted advertising we see across-platforms today. The tool in question is the online tracking cookie. This consists of a short line of code that is saved on our device or computer (nowadays with our consent) which enables websites to save username and passwords and also track our browsing behaviour. This used to be placed without explicitly making us aware of it, but the EU Cookie Directive of 2011, ensured that websites are required to get the permission of any web user (EU-based of course) to place cookies.

However, while cookies are extremely common across millions of websites, it’s the extent of the tracking that most of us will not be aware of, as well as the sheer volume of tracking cookies implemented today. To put it into context, I bought a new laptop to write this book with and in the first few days of connecting it to the internet I visited around 25 different websites and conducted approximately 20 Google searches. When I ran a system scan for the first time with my security product, it detected 69 tracking cookies.

What are these cookies tracking?

• There are two main types of cookie, the first of which is known as first-party cookies. These are the cookies that you usually want, as they are placed by the websites you are proactively visiting and can often help you with your user experience if you visit them regularly. They allow these websites to remember your login information and other preferences.

However, an important consideration is that when we visit a website and agree to the use of cookies (which many websites require as a condition of using them) it’s sometimes not just cookies from that website which we are agreeing to save to our device.

• The second type of cookie is the third party cookie, which we often agree to, by accepting all cookies. Many third party cookies can come from advertisers or ad networks to track our browsing and serve us more relevant advertising.

As advised in a blog post from Clearcode 35 looking at the difference between first and third-party cookies, there are a few different ways of stopping third-party cookies tracking you, including using a private browsing mode or changing your browser settings (a quick search will tell you the details of how to do this in your browser of choice), using browsers which disable third-party cookies (there is also an option in iPhone setting to disable all cookies) or using an ad blocker.

However, despite the development of these practices over the years, it does seem that privacy is becoming a bigger concern for companies across the sector and there are moves to eliminate more of the widespread tracking from unwanted entities. For example, in January 2020, Google announced in a blog post entitled “Building a more private web: A path towards making third party cookies obsolete” that it would phase out third-party cookies on its Chrome browser by 2022. In the post it explained “Users are demanding greater privacy – including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used, and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands.” 36 Other browsers have already taken this action.

Even so, the websites you actively visit can also place cookies for advertising purposes. In some cases this is known as retargeting, for example if you fill a basket on an e-commerce site but don’t make a purchase, then cookies can be used to target adverts to persuade you to revisit and make a purchase.

How are these ads served to you on other sites? Essentially, major publishers will allow targeted advertising through ad networks or work with partners like Google to serve relevant ads in real-time. Either way, your browsing behaviour is being tracked across the web, across the devices you use and even other users of the same home network – if my wife has searched for holidays in Italy, I will probably see ads for travel sites the next time I go online. But the use of tracking goes deeper than simply serving direct ads to us on other places on the web, as tracking tools are also used by bigger sites to follow our habits to improve their recommendations and the future relevancy of ads we see.

Another example of how we’re tracked across the web is through social media ‘like’ buttons and the Facebook pixel. According to a 2018 article from Buzzfeed 37 “the Facebook pixel is a piece of code advertisers put on their sites that tracks your activity on those sites and reports it back to Facebook.” Why haven’t you heard of this before? Well, Facebook doesn’t make any secret of it as there is lots of detail on it publicly available through Facebook , where it is described as “an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.” 38 However, it is contained in the business help section, so if you are not an advertiser you will likely not have come across this page.

Let’s face it, millions of websites contain Facebook and other social media ‘like’ buttons and this doesn’t just mean that Facebook gets information when you click the like button, but when you take any action on the site that includes the ‘like’ button. It receives more information if you are logged into Facebook at the time, but apparently still receives some if you are logged out or don’t even have a Facebook account.

A lot of sites also have the options to log in using your Facebook, Google or other account logins. If you are using this as a login method to other sites and services you use, it is a pretty fair assumption that the web giants will have an even more complete picture of your likes, dislikes and online habits which will become apparent in the ad targeting.

In this author’s humble opinion, targeted advertising on the whole is not a bad thing and some level of tracking online will always need to be in place (unless we want to start paying a subscription for every online service we use). During the course of conversations about this book, people in the industry have made the point that online, targeted advertising has played a huge role in democratising advertising for every kind of business and organisation. Small businesses and non-profit organisations benefit hugely as they get affordable and effective advertising strategies that they may not get on other platforms, leading to a positive economic impact.

A balance needs to be struck though. If you are concerned about privacy online there are many ways that you can limit some tracking of your online habits. Some options are outlined below, but just bear in mind that many websites will require you to allow some cookies in order to be able to use the full functionality of the site or even to access the website in the first place:

• Check your cookie settings in your browser – I’m not going to recommend one browser over another, whether you use Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, etc. all have options to change your cookie settings and protect your privacy better through blocking certain types of tracking. Some browsers enable a level of protection as standard and some even allow add-ons to protect an additional level of protection against tracking (such as ad blocking add-ons or Firefox’s Facebook container add-on). A simple search will tell you how to change your settings for your chosen browser and adjust it to the level you’re happy with.
• Log out of websites when you’re browsing other sites – As outlined in this chapter, some sites and services will track you as far as possible across the web and they gain more information on your browsing habits if you remain logged in when you visit other sites.
• Use a private browsing mode – If you want to disable a level of tracking, then every browser will offer you some sort of private or incognito browsing mode. However, this has its limitations, as outlined in a recent article by Consumer Reports 39 and only the cookies and data that would ordinarily be stored on your computer are deleted at the end of the browsing session. But the information the websites you visit store is still likely to be logged. Though it will stop targeted ads appearing in other browsing sessions on your network based on those websites you have visited on private mode. This is especially helpful if you’re searching for a surprise present, or, of course, any other browsing activities you’d like to keep from others in your household.
• Consider the tools you use – I’ll refrain from recommending one tool over another. There’s a reason that the most popular services are so popular as they generally offer some of the best products and best experiences. But it’s worth considering mixing up the tools you use for some of your more day-to-day activity, and consider some services that sell themselves on not gathering data.
• Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) – The tips above will only limit tracking to a relatively small extent. A VPN on the other hand will disguise your IP address by routing you through a different server, perhaps based in another country to allow you to browse the web anonymously. This will stop advertisers tracking you but is a paid for service. It’s generally accepted that some of the more robust VPNs are really the only way to truly stop or cut back the level of tracking that goes on today. VPNs are also used by those who want to access a website that may be blocked in their country or for people who want to watch entertainment content that is only available in certain countries (this has its own legal issue of course that we won’t get into here). VPNs will also boost your cybersecurity, making it harder for data you’re transmitting online to be intercepted.
• Visit the privacy and control centres of the sites you use most – Most of the bigger sites that make use of our personal data do offer options to control you data more, including Facebook , Google, Amazon, Twitter and Snapchat .

At this point, some readers may question whether ad blockers should be added as a recommendation here. An ad blocker is a piece of software (often delivered as a browser extension or app) that will block ads from appearing on many of the websites that you visit. While this could improve your browsing experience and stop a level of tracking (and protect you from any potential malicious / false ads), you should remember a lot of websites that you are using for no cost are ad-funded (and some do not request to store your data for the privilege) and this has the potential to negatively impact them, unless you actively white-list them in any ad-blocker you use.

As I’ve said at the outset, I’m not suggesting that you drop all services that use your data to make money as I use many of them myself and if you tried to do this it would preclude you from using many useful online and mobile tools. However, with the uproar that we have witnessed in the past couple of years based around a fairly lax attitude to our privacy, there are a great many more options to better protect your privacy which you should consider.